....from the mouths of babes....

discussing feelings with my 7 year old.
talking about anger, sadness, tiredness, frustration - trying to tease out one from the other; attempting to identify what we are actually feeling at any given time.
she's a child of quite startling depth. faced with the theory that we can sit in many different emotions at any given moment, she struggled through genuine tears of grief to tell me that she has a part of her which is very, very sad, and which will always be there, always be a part of her.  'we share that sadness, you and me' she said.

talking about redemption with my 7 year old.
talking about choosing our own identity, working with the idea that we all of us have challenges, a drive to self improvement. identifying times when we each have felt truly happy, and seeing how feeling happy is tied up in also feeling generous, giving, loving, compassionate, empathetic....

together, we are accepting the notion that we can choose our own perception, from moment to moment - that each moment is a gift, to be evaluated and explored, choices made about how we respond, and how our responses will shape the next moment, and the next.

these children of mine truly drive me - sometimes, they drive me to distraction, others they drive me up the wall, often they drive me crazy and a few times even to the very edge of the abyss.....then there are the times where the place they drive me to is exactly the place i need to be, if only i had seen it for myself.

it used to really irk me that i was living a cliche - parenting the inner child whilst parenting my children; seeing in my child's eyes my younger self, crying out for guidance, acceptance, nurturing, unconditional love. i see it now as a symbiosis - as i teach them i learn, as they learn they teach me, we learn together as we teach each other.

and, in this moment, i am grateful. grateful that a bedtime conversation takes me out of my own feelings of tension and resentment, and that through my child's struggles we both learn to be gentle, on ourselves, and on each other.